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What drives the propensity to vote for ethnic-minority-interest parties?

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Abstract

In the study of ethnic-minorities’ voting preferences it is evidenced that ethnic minorities have favoured social-democratic parties in most European countries. In the Netherlands, however, a part of them has divided from the social-democrats in 2017 and voted a new ethnic-minority-interest party into parliament. In the 2021 election, multiple ethnic-minority-interest parties arose in the Dutch political landscape, raising the question how they compete over ethnic-minority voters, who form an increasing share of the electorate but remain marginalized in politics. Using the Dutch Ethnic Minority Election Survey 2021, we shed light on the propensity to vote (PTV) for three ethnic-minority-interest parties: DENK, BIJ1 and NIDA. First, since the parties differ in which ethnic communities their candidates are rooted, we test ethnic community-based differences in their party preferences. Second, we disentangle the role of economic positions from the role of cultural (e.g., migration and group discrimination) and moral (e.g. religiosity and conservative-authoritarian) explanations. Our findings show that explanations of the PTVs for DENK and NIDA do not differ substantially and are higher among religious Muslim voters who support multiculturalism and who perceive discrimination. Among migrant-background citizens, the more radical BIJ1-party particularly scores higher among manual workers, those who have left-wing economic views and moral-progressive values. Strikingly, East-Asian-Dutch and Latin-American-Dutch (other than Surinamese-Dutch) hardly express a propensity to vote the ethnic-minority-interest parties.

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Notes

  1. Given the geographic concentration of the ethnic-minority electorate—these parties can win seats under a FPTP system, like RESPECT did.

  2. The Surinamese-Dutch community in the Netherlands is diverse: 37% are Afro-Surinamese (often Christian; their ancestors were brought to America as slaves), 27% are Hindustani (often Hindu; their ancestors immigrated from India as indentured labourers) and 16% are Javanese (often Muslim; their ancestors immigrated from Indonesia as indentured labourers) Source: CIA world factbook.

  3. Indonesia and Japan are noteworthily excluded. This was geopolitical with Japan being an industrialized capitalist country and ally of ‘the West’, and Indonesian migrants are mainly descendants of Dutch colonial settlers who migrated back after Indonesia's independence (Yanow and Van der Haar, 2013).

  4. The right to vote in national elections comes with Dutch nationality, which can generally be obtained after having lived for five years in the country.

  5. For comparison, the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Survey had a total response rate of 23% after a face-to-face survey (49%), followed by their mail back questionnaire (Howat et al., 2011).

  6. Beyond this there is good representation of respondents based on ethnic background; see Appendix Table 3. There is however an underrepresentation of the first generation. It makes up 61% of the migrant-background population eligible to vote and 55% of the data.

  7. Extrapolating to vote shares among DEMES for BIJ1 show a lower vote share, but BIJ1 also taps the progressive part of the ethnic-majority population and part of the Black Dutch-Caribbean community is not categorized having a migrant background in the Dutch government’s classification scheme as Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba were considered Dutch until 2020, when they became a separate country for migration statistics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ERCOMER/Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, PO Box 80140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marcel Lubbers

  2. Department of Political Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Simon Otjes

  3. Department of Sociology, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Niels Spierings

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Correspondence to Marcel Lubbers.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Table 2 Ethnic-minority-interest parties in Western Europe
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Table 3 Sample and population composition by background
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Table 4 Descriptives table (weighted)
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Table 5 Predictions of the propensity to vote (PTV) for DENK, NIDA and BIJ1(unweighted) (1247 observations nested in 558 respondents)
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Table 6 Effects from perceived group discrimination and personal experienced discrimination on PTVs, when the latter added to Appendix 5
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Table 7 Effects from moral dimension on PTVs, when estimated on selection of respondents who participat ed in the post-election questionnaire and including a measurement of euthanasia (unweighted)(733 observations nested in 328 respondents)
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Table 8 Predictions of the Propensity to Vote (PTV) for DENK, NIDA and BIJ1 with don’t know answers as missing versus don’t know answers coded as 1. (1690 observations nested in 600 respondents)
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Table 9 Likelihood to have a PTV of 8 or higher (unweighted)
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Table 10 Likelihood to have ever expressed a vote (intention) for DENK, NIDA and BIJ1 (unweighted)(n = 735)
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Lubbers, M., Otjes, S. & Spierings, N. What drives the propensity to vote for ethnic-minority-interest parties?. Acta Polit 59, 557–588 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-023-00309-3

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